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Dave Larsen writes about higher education.Home > Blogs > On Campus > Archives > 2008 > March > 30
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Cedarville caught up in speculation
An anonymous phone call from someone in Cedarville, Ohio that something was amiss at the university there triggered my front page story and deeper explanation story on Sunday on the terminations of two professors arising from an apparent theological divide within its most important academic department, Bible studies.
A note about the “climate of fear” statement quoted in the headline: That hardly summarizes the whole story. That statement comes from a group of 16 faculty - some current, some retired - called the Coalition of the Concerned, who are decidedly against the administration but are leading a very public campaign to call attention to the fired faculty issue. It should be noted too, that the headline makes it appear the faculty were suddenly fired this weekend - they were terminated in July, many months ago.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, the national newspaper for higher education, first wrote a similar story about the faculty firings in mid-March. I had just started to look into it when the call came in, signaling to me that people locally wanted to hear more about it.
A couple of thoughts on this: There’s a lot of he-said, she-said going on in regards to what exactly caused the terminations and the extent of the divide. Cedarville can’t say much about it, because they’re bound by confidentiality. I talked to Mr. Hoffeditz, some current students for background, the coalition leading the effort to preserve fundamentalism and the AAUP - but the administration was very limited in what it could say. It did say that if it weren’t bound by confidentiality and people could see what they saw, people might better understand why they took the actions they did.
I know they regret that they must respond to speculation.
Why is this still simmering? Because Cedarville’s niche is fundamentalism. There are plenty of evangelical Christian colleges who AREN’T fundamentalist around the country - but for people who wanted to preserve the certainty of the Bible’s truth as the roadmap for their lives, Cedarville was/is the premier place for this because it also has plenty of great, accredited programs. So for it to appear that those fundamentals are openly debated, that the fundamentals of the faith that supercede fundamentalists’ spouses, jobs and children are being diluted - well that’s a serious dilemma that Cedarville is being forced to deal with. The Christians who want to preserve fundamentalism in the wake of modern doubt really care about this. It’s a faith thing.
In all my interviews I learned the parties all have one thing in common: They’re incredibly philosophical (I admit, I spent four days researching what seemed to be narrow differences in theology but realized there are dozen of books written about the truth and certainty debate, telling me the differences, to them, are huge.) and they all really care about Cedarville.
The similarities in cerebral critical mass between Cedarville and another liberal arts college in Greene County are striking: You can’t sneak anything past students at Cedarville and Antioch College.
I hope people don’t look at this story through the narrow lens of whether or not they believe in God, but rather look at it for what the issue is: That no one at Cedarville seems to be reconciling the speculation with the facts, and that, as Cedarville senior Keith Rice put it, is something students want to see happen.
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